Queen

Fifty years ago, on October 31, 1975, Queen openly defied their record label by releasing as a single “Bohemian Rhapsody”, a track running almost six minutes that seemed destined to remain nothing more than an artistic and commercial gamble. Fifty years later, that gamble has become legend: not only the band's most iconic song, chosen not by chance as the title of the 2018 biopic, but also one of the most beautiful, complex and original songs in the history of rock.

With its daring structure, blending ballad, opera and hard rock, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was an unprecedented challenge. It took six weeks of work and five recording studios – from the initial sessions at Rockfield Studios to the final overdubs at Wessex Sound in London – to complete it. Roger Taylor recalled that Emi wanted to shorten it: “They told us it was too long and that it would never work. We thought: ‘Well, that wouldn't make any sense, you'd lose all the different moods it expresses’. So we said no. Six minutes or nothing”.

Their manager, John Reid, played it for Elton John, who reacted with disbelief: “Are you mad? Radio will never play that!”. But Freddie Mercury, convinced of the song's potential, decided to play it cunning: he handed a copy of the tape to his friend Kenny Everett, a Bbc dj, who immediately grasped its genius. Everett began playing fragments of it during his show, stoking the audience's curiosity, and eventually played it in full fourteen times in a single weekend on Capital Fm. In the player, the original recording of Kenny Everett's show, the first time in history that “Bohemian Rhapsody” was ever played on the radio.

Within two days, "Bohemian Rhapsody" had already become a phenomenon. By the following Monday, record shops were besieged by fans eager to buy a single that, officially, hadn't even been released yet.

Meanwhile, American DJ Paul Drew also got hold of a copy of the track and aired it across the RKO General radio network, helping to send “Bohemian-mania” exploding onto the international stage. When it was officially released, the song hit number one in the UK, where it stayed for nine consecutive weeks, topped the charts in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the Netherlands, and reached number six in the United States, selling over six million copies. After Freddie Mercury's death, the single climbed back to the top of the charts, cementing its status as a classic. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004 and was selected in 2022 for the National Recording Registry in the United States.

But the power of "Bohemian Rhapsody" isn't just a matter of numbers. It's a work that defies categorization: a suite in three movements – the opening ballad, the operatic interlude and the hard rock section – built on nearly two hundred vocal and instrumental tracks manually overdubbed onto tape.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a prodigious summary of several centuries of European (and beyond) popular music history. There are church Christmas carols, the Platters, Led Zeppelin, opera, Monteverdi's melodrama, Bach's cantatas, Verdi's choral melodies, Frank Sinatra, the Broadway musical. All of it thrown together and blended with no regard for chronological order: church song grafted onto the power-ballad, guitar solos leading from cabaret atmospheres to those of Opera, in a riot of vocal overdubs, melodic ideas, and vehement riffs mimicking the horn progressions of an orchestra amid angelic and demonic choirs, all without ever losing sight of the main melodic theme. A titanic undertaking for its era, one that testified to Queen's ambition and Mercury's visionary perfectionism.

The lyrics, enigmatic and never fully clarified, have fueled the most wide-ranging interpretations. Biographer Lesley-Ann Jones has suggested it's a symbolic confession from Freddie, a veiled coming out in the form of a musical drama. Queen, wisely, never explained the meaning of the song, keeping its mystery intact.

Its words are woven through with references to opera and popular culture: Galileo, perhaps a nod to Brian May's astronomy studies; Figaro and Scaramouche, evoking Rossini and the commedia dell'arte; the Arabic invocation “Bismillah,” meaning “in the name of God”; and Beelzebub, “the devil put aside for me.” Theatrical, religious and literary flourishes that reflect the cosmopolitan sensibility of Mercury, born in Zanzibar as Farrokh Bulsara.

The film “Bohemian Rhapsody,” directed by Bryan Singer in 2018, helped bring renewed attention to the song's origins and genius, sending it back to the top of charts and playlists worldwide. But the song remains, above all, an unrepeatable work: a challenge to commercial logic, a sonic journey that redefined the boundaries of pop and rock.

Fifty years on, "Bohemian Rhapsody" remains both a mystery and a revelation. A song that never stops thrilling and surprising, as if its magic were still waiting to be fully decoded.

And speaking of rediscoveries, some previously unreleased verses (later discarded) from “Bohemian Rhapsody” will be included in “A Life in Lyrics,” a book collecting lyrics, notes and alternate versions of Queen songs. The material comes from the singer's personal archives, shared by Mary Austin, his longtime partner and close friend, to whom Mercury left his home and belongings after his death in 1991. Austin has said she found the notes while cataloguing the contents of Garden Lodge, the London residence where Mercury lived until the end. “In early 2023, while sorting through papers that my family and I had kept for over thirty years, I started leafing through them and discovered loose sheets and notebooks full of words that revealed unexpected wonders,” she said.

“A Life in Lyrics” will be released next year, to mark the eightieth anniversary of Mercury's birth.

2025 also marks the 50th anniversary of “A Night At The Opera,” the album that in November 1975 established Queen on the international stage, together with the single “Bohemian Rhapsody” itself. To mark the occasion, new limited-edition reissues will be released on colored vinyl and cassette.

“A Night At The Opera,” recorded by the classic lineup — Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon — marked a turning point in the band's career. It was their first album to reach number 1 in Britain and it stayed on the charts for weeks in several countries, foreshadowing the success that would be confirmed in the years that followed.

The new edition of the album will be released on October 17th, already available for pre-order on the Universal Music Italy website. The single “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which at the time spent nine weeks at the top of the British charts, will instead be reissued from October 31st in various collector's formats: 7″ vinyl, 12″ vinyl, picture disc and cassette.

The record was made under the supervision of producer Roy Thomas Baker, with recordings taking place at various studios including Rockfield Studios in Wales, right after the deal was struck with John Reid, manager of Elton John. The renewed sense of creative freedom is reflected – besides in “Bohemian Rhapsody” – in the remaining eleven tracks as well, ranging from “Death On Two Legs” to “I'm In Love With My Car,” from the ballad “Love Of My Life” to the folk of “'39,” through to numbers like “You're My Best Friend” and “The Prophet's Song.”

Fifty years on, "A Night At The Opera" remains the most ambitious document of Queen's early period: an album that marked their definitive breakthrough and continues to be celebrated, not only as a cult object for collectors, but also as testimony to one of the most eccentric and influential experiences in British rock of the Seventies. 

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